phobiainfo

Citizens of Reeves city (Louisiana state) needed almost 50 years to solve their massive problem. In early 1960s this locality was assigned area code 666. It was revealed that citizens were suffering from fear of “666 - number of the devil”. Only recently, the company CenturyTel gave the city possibility to change their code to 749, and citizens finally breathe again.
 

According to last study by Mind, greatest UK mental health fund, more than 10 million of people around the world suffer from phobias. It was noticed that inhabitants of megalopolises do suffer from phobias more often than inhabitants of small settlements. However, this numbers can be much bigger because many people carefully hide their fears.
 

What Is Social Phobia?

Social phobia is a disorder characterized by overwhelming anxiety and excessive self-consciousness in everyday social situations. Individuals with social phobia have a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being watched and judged by others and of being embarrassed or humiliated by their own actions.Their fear may be so severe that it interferes with work, school, and other ordinary activities. While many individuals with social phobia recognize that their fear of being around people may be excessive or unreasonable, they are unable to overcome it. They often worry for days of a dreaded situation.

Social phobia can be limited to only one type of situation (fear of speaking in formal or informal situations, eating or drinking in front of others) may be so broad that an individual experiences symptoms almost anytime they are around other people. Social phobia may keep people from going to work or school on some days. Physical symptoms include blushing, profuse sweating, trembling, and other symptoms of anxiety, including difficulty talking and nausea or other stomach discomfort.

Ablutophobia - fear of washing and bathing.

Aerophobia - fear of air.

Anablephobia - fear of looking up.

Anemophobia - fear of wind.

Anthrophobia - fear of flowers.

Arachibutyrophobia - fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.

Arithmophobia - fear of numbers.

Aulophobia - fear of flutes.

Auroraphobia - fear of Northern lights.

Barophobia - fear of gravity.

Bathophobia - fear of depth.

Batophobia - fear of being close to high buildings.

Bibliophobia - fear of books.

Blennophobia - fear of slime.

Bogyphobia - fear of bogeys and the bogeyman.

Cacophobia - fear of ugliness.

Caligynephobia - fear of beautiful women.

Carnophobia - fear of meat.

Chionophobia - fear of snow.

Chorophobia - fear of dancing.

Chronomentrophobia - fear of clocks.

Coulrophobia - fear of clowns.

Cyclophobia - fear of bicycles.

Dendrophobia - fear of trees.

Dextrophobia - fear of objects at the right side of the body.

Didaskaleinophobia - fear of going to school.

Dutchphobia - fear of the Dutch.

Eleutherophobia - fear of freedom.

Emetophobia - fear of vomiting.

Ergophobia - fear of work.

Erotophobia - fear of sexual love or sexual questions.
Euphobia - fear of hearing good news.

Febriphobia - fear of fever.

Francophobia - fear of France and French culture.

Gamophobia - fear of marriage.

Genuphobia - fear of knees.

Gerascophobia - fear of growing old.

Gymnophobia - fear of nudity.

Hedonophobia - fear of feeling pleasure.

Heliophobia - fear of the sun.

Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia - fear of the number 666.

Hylophobia - fear of forests.

Ideophobia - fear of ideas.

Iophobia - fear of poison.

Kathisophobia - fear of sitting down.

Koinoniphobia - fear of rooms.

Leukophobia - fear of the color white.

Limnophobia - fear of lakes.

Logizomechanophobia - fear of computers.

Macrophobia - fear of long waits.

Mageirocophobia - fear of cooking.

Melanophobia - fear of the color black.

Metrophobia - fear of poetry.

Nelophobia - fear of glass.
Neopharmaphobia - fear of new drugs.

Nomatophobia - fear of names.

Nostophobia - fear of returning home.

Nucleomituphobia - fear of nuclear weapons

Octophobia - fear of the figure 8.

Oenophobia- fear of wines.

Optophobia - fear of opening one's eyes.

Panophobia - fear of everything.

Papaphobia - fear of the Pope.

Paraskavedekatriaphobia - fear of Friday the 13th.

Phagophobia - fear of swallowing or of eating or of being eaten.

Philophobia - fear of falling in love or being in love

Pteronophobia - fear of being tickled by feathers.

Rectophobia - fear of rectum or rectal diseases.

Russophobia - fear of Russians.

Samhainophobia - fear of Halloween.

Scelerophibia - fear of bad men, burglars.

Sciophobia - fear of shadows.

Selenophobia - fear of the moon.

Soceraphobia - fear of parents-in-law.

Taphephobia - fear of being buried alive.

Testophobia - fear of taking tests.

Xanthophobia - fear of the color yellow and the word yellow.

Verbophobia - fear of words.

We should try to look into yourself and to understand why do we act in this or that way, and we should try to answer the question “Why do we act this way?”
 

After long searchings anyone of us would come to the conclusion that our behavior is managed by two different feelings – fear and desire. Desire is connected with pleasure and with opportunity to get something pleasant and useful.
 

Fear is connected with opportunity to lose something not just in material, but also in spiritual sphere. Crazy desire makes us do different things that sometimes seem crazy. Fear paralyzes our actions, people lose their intuition and flexibility of their thoughts.
 

Depending on what feeling of those two influences more, human actions are determined. What people make in the morning influences on how they live in the evening. Hence, comes a conclusion that it is necessary to throw away your fear. Easy to say but hard to make.
 

Fear is too much connected with instinct for self-preservation and our bloated “I”.
 

If we put “fear” and “desire” on plates of weight, we will see fear outweighs tdesire in most of people. People are taught to fear from childhood. All methods of education and management are based on fear.
 

Make a list of things that you fear and a list of things that you don't. You will see that list of things you fear is much bigger than the second one.

The main reason for fears of sex and fears of starting sexual life is mass media which is promoting the images of a hot woman, ideal man and macho man with big genitalia which is able to prolong intercourse for several hours getting and giving satisfaction in different unthinkable ways.
 

Mostly, boys and men are influenced by pornography as they are interested in it more than women. In its turn, women are interested in “soft” erotica and in modern magazines which promote the image of an ideal woman that is flawless and beautiful, but in fact, 99% of women cannot correspond to this image.
 

Namely the feeling of personal inability in comparison with those ideals is the most frequent cause of failures in first sexual experiences in boys. In this case a boy cannot get erection and his girl, at best, provides orgasm for her partner and does not get satisfied itself. The very beginning of sexual life often determines its further development.
 

Older men have the same fears - they are afraid that they may not have erection. But the reasons in this case are different. Experts say that men above 30 years old suffer from psychoneurotic reasons and so they fear to weaken as the years go by, they fear of stopping to correspond to their permanent partner well known demands.
 

As to women, their libido lowers because of stress, overwork and other psychological traumas which are provoked by speed rhythms of modern life when a women must manage to be business lady, housewife and mother... Often no time remains on sex...
 

More older the man is, the more he fears sex, because the problem of sexual disorders becomes more serious.
 

In men at “golden age” the reasons of sexual problems are such diseases as prostatitis, blood vessels blockade disorders and age lowering of hormone production.
 

In women, after menopause lubricant production usually lowers. Also vagina paries do thicken and lose their elasticity. All that worsens sexual life. The situation worsens when developing such diseases as diabetes and high blood pressure. Taking anti-estrogen drugs and radiation during cancer treatment also worsen sexual life.

Why a sudden and loud noise causes fear? First of all, it is an immediate constraint, or in other words, body protection against danger, and only after that thinking about the origin of the noise occurs and as a result occurs fright. This is a conscious fear.

What do we fear when we watch horror movies or see hightmares? Here fear is caused by negative events, more exactly, by horrible images shown on the screen or imagined by ourselves.

We fear ugliness, abnormality, unpleasant things, everything that is negative. So what we have here? When we face negative things our brain turns it into fear, and fear causes discomfort in our bogy. The sequence of fear appearing is next:

1. we see or experience something negative

2. our brain turns this negative image into psychological process in the body

3. body responds on negative image by feelings of discomfort

One more sequence, a simple one: 

image, thought, emotion - process in brain - body response 

Here is activated body self-protection against negative factors. In our body already exists a program of protection against self-distruction. Fear is distruction. If a man often experiences negative emotions such as fear, diffidence, blame, injury it causes chronic pain in a particular organ, and finally, a disease. 

What happens when a man feels happiness, inspiration, joy? Right, he forgets about all his diseases.

Conclusion: our body is a very complicated mechanism of self-regulation on all levels that shows a man the way he must live, and where to go for, in other words, it shows the way to self-improvement.

An open question still remain - how does images, thoughts, emotions turn into psysical sensation, or in other words, how does cerebration occur? Such science as Neuropsychology can give the answer.

How does fear look like visually? Let us examine fear. All negative images are connected with a certain action or object, and with further examination our attention moves to physical sensation into body. Various images are not fear itself - they are just causes of fear. You cannot find a common image of fear, because it has no common visual image. You cannot find fear in mentality space or into the void. You have to understand that fear is a physical sensation in the body.

What is confidence?

Confidence... How does it look like? What emotions and feelings do appear? What a man feels? Facility. Rise. Fly. Inspiration. This is a feeling of something beyond our body, something high and something wide. Confidence pushes a man apart. Unlike fear it can be hardly described. It is right when people say that fear is earthly feeling and confidence is more elevated one. Yes, confidence is a divine feeling!

Why feeling of confidence can be hardly described and hardly be turned into more familiar emotions? Probably, because our body got used to experience fear and it is the most ordinary occupation for it that is why it is so easy to arouse fear.

Confidence can be hardly aroused if you do not feel it right now. This is a quick feeling and you do not manage to describe it. 

Conclusion: confidence is a state of readiness to perform an action, in other words, it is a readiness for work, a prerequisite to the action.

Why psychological perception of any danger causes organism response? The answer is in human anatomy, more exactly, in the reasons of pain appearing. Is psychological pain similar to physical one?
 

How pain occurs? With physical pain everything is quite clear. We do not take into consideration simple motor reflexes that are performed under control of spinal cord.
 

During physical receptor sensation the nervous impulse is transmitted via nerves to corresponding brain part, then the brain transmits response impulse to an organ. Occurs feeling of pain, in other words klendusity is responding.
 

How psychological pain occurs? Our organism has such feature as self-regulation of all physiological processes, in other words, brain responses on the change in the chemical processes in the organism.
 

Probably, under the influence of emotions in the organism occurs some kind of change, for example, in blood composition, then it is transmitted to the brain, and again the response impulse from the brain is transmitted to one of organs and thus pain occurs. Let it call the psychological cause of the pain.
 

Now we should understand how emotions influence on physical condition of organism. It is necessary to understand the complicated organization both of nervous system and mentality. For that purpose there is need in a specialist.
 

For example, when you fear darkness you suffer from heartache, woodiness in blossom, discomfort in throat. You feel like somebody stops your breath. Here you fear not darkness itself but a thing that can stand in the darkness. It is based on received information about it during your life. You fear that something can play the devil with you. A little child never fears darkness until he was told what can be in it. Let it call conscious fear.

Such phobias as fear of a concrete situation or object, that frightens you with something and rises the feeling of fear and horror, are also referred to conscious fear because you feel this fear in result of your bad experience or negative information received from someone. What is the nature of this fear? How does this fear occur? What do I feel? Lack of confidence. Embarrassment. Dejection. Inactivity. Anxiety. Blame. Injury. Consternation. Stress. Panic. You feel difficulty in your blossom. Respiratory difficulty. Cold sweat. These are psychological and physical sensations in your body. And that means that fear is interconnected with other negative emotions. One thing causes another, comes from the other, but means one and the same thing.
 

What about unconscious fear or, in other words, a simple fear not based on the experience? What can it be?
 

This can be the fear of the uncertainty, fear of the unidentified. For example, children fear noises, unknown things. Generally, from the very beginning of mankind history people always were frightened of inexplicable acts of the nature. Or their fear was based on phenomenon seen before?
 

For example, fear of unknown future, fear of possible fantasized negative events. How do we find out that these are bad events? We compare possible events with experienced negative ones.
 

It turns out that we fear unknown things because we fear bad unknown things. We do not fear good unknown things because they arouse joy. And when we feel fear, all good events we do forget. In other words, when we think about an unknown event in our mind a bad image appears, as a result occurs a feeling of fear based on negative early experienced fear. It means that fear of unknown thing is a conscious fear.

People with specific phobias, the object of which can be easily avoided (for example, snakes), needs just help, even in case when the man rarely comes across with the object of his phobia. When phobias intervenes into man's life, then most effective method will be psychotherapy followed by medicines. Medicines are used when we talk about teenagers and adults, and are not used at all when the talk is about kids. Although the majority of health insurance policies cover some problems with mental health, they do not give complex compensation to cover all costs on phobia treatment.

Medicines can block the feeling of panic fear especially when use them along with cognitive behavior therapy. This method is used to treat agoraphobia.

Cognitive behavior therapy adds to traditional behavior therapy the cognitive approach. It learns people to change their thoughts, behavior and the attitude towards reality, and uses for that purpose technique of anxiety reduction, relaxation of muscles and focus shift.

The main task of cognitive behavior therapy is exposure therapy in course of which people gradually come closer to the object of their fear until they get used to it and until physical symptomatology comes to nothing. For example, a man fearing of snakes looks at snake image. When the man would look at that image without fear, doctor would show him video with snake. Every stage of therapy is repeated until symptoms of phobia definitely disappear. So patient can achieve the condition when he can touch a real snake. After such therapy three fourths of patients feel much better.

Another more harsh method of cognitive behavior psychology is called pumping. The object of fear is placed immediately in front of patient and the patient stays with this object until the anxiety goes away.

To treat specific phobias some kinds of meidcines are used. They do control symptoms and help to prevent panic attacks. Here the benzodiazepines are used such as alprazolam (xanax) and diazepam (valuim). Also are used medicines controlling tension of blood which are called beta-blocking agents (propanolol, atenolol). They do work very good in case of specific social phobias when anxiety is impossible to avoid, for example, during public speaking. Such medicines reduce effects of extreme stimulation controlling this way symptomatology of stress.

Besides that, some antidepressants can be effective enough if they are used during cognitive behavior therapy. These antidepressants are: deterrents such as oxydase monamine, phenelzine, tranylcypromine equal to serotonin deterrents (fluoxetine, paroxetine, fluvoxamine).

Specialists cannot say exactly from where phobias come from, although researchers say the main cause is the interaction of heredity and external events. Some hypersensitive people are bearers of unique chemical reactions in the brain and as a result they have a strong reaction on stress. Those people can be very sensitive to caffeine which activates some chemical processes in the brain.

Neuro-photography gave researchers the possibility to study some parts of the brain and specific nervous pathways which are associated with phobias. In 2004 scientists examined tonsils – neuron elongated bodies which take part in behavioural response when human feels fear. With phobias is connected such part of the brain as cerebellum.

Experts say that tendency for phobias is observed in families and fears are inherited, and some specific panic usually is just a push for progress of the disease, for example, agoraphobia (fear of opened spaces). Let us see how it happens. A person is predisposed to phobias. He experiences a difficult fly and after that can appear a fear of using of air transport. The only thing that scientists cannot understand is why people who experienced a shock are divided into two categories: those who became a victim of phobia and those who does not.

Social phobia usually appears in childhood or in mature growth. Sometimes it results from distressing or depreciative situation. Some vulnerable children which were grown in bad social conditions (for example, parents left them) or having weak social abilities also are predisposed to phobias. Conditions for phobia progression can be low self-rating, shyness and inadequacy.

A man with agoraphobia can suffer from panic attacks at any moment without any reason. While the attack can last just one minute or about it, the man can feel so strong fear that the possibility of future attack is horrifying him. That is why people with agoraphobia avoid places where they cannot hide in case of attack. When he feels panic the world around becomes much narrower.

Although a push to specific phobia can be different, the symptoms of different phobias are similar. These are feeling of horror and fear of upcoming death, rapid heart and hurried breathing, sweaty palms and other signs of panic attack. People can feel a hard discomfort when they see the object of the fear. For example, people who fear to fly will suffer from rapid heart two weeks before the flight itself at the thought of it.

Doctors, professionals in mental health, are the specialists who will help man with unreasoned fear (and it does not depend on his age). Professional can identify phobia after a long conversation and discussion about psychological and physical symptoms. Children usually describe symptoms more obscure that is why it is necessary to let them discuss symptoms with parents. Social phobias are connected with other mental disorders, depression and drug abusing.